Revesby to Redfern by Pushbike

In July 2002 I moved to Revesby, and I hoped to ride my bike atleast
once a week to my work at Sydney Uni, near Redfern. So a week after
moving in, I took a morning off and tried the route out for the first
time. It took me 1 hour and 40 minutes to go one-way, but there was
a fair bit of stuffing round. Since then I've ridden in to work once
or twice a week, returning home at night with my bike on the train.

I've found various ways to make the trip faster. Depending on which
way I go, it can take as little as an hour. Since the train trip is
50-60 minutes, door to door, cycling seems a pretty good option to
me. It takes about the same amount of time as the train, but I can
feel the sun on my face and get some exercise. Not to mention smile
and wave to the friendly walkers and gardeners I meet along the way,
who seem to be a bit happier than my fellow train travellers on my
days off the pedals. No one smiles at strangers on the train.

A rough outline of my route, with difficulty ratings:

Revesby to Riverwood

Back streets and a duckboard crossing over
Salt Pan Creek. Intermediate.

Riverwood to Bexley North shadowing the M5

A lovely long off-road
cycleway shadowing the M5 motorway. Gorgeous, atleast by Sydney standards.
The second half is suitable for beginners, the first half is intermediate.

Back streets through Marrickville. Sometimes
pleasant but often dreadful. Highly experienced.

Erskineville to_USyd

Inner city backstreets: a mixed bag. Experienced.

The above route takes me about 80 minutes.There are some alternative
sections too:

Revesby to Bexley North on the M5 shoulder

A more sustained
pedalling effort, and you can't ignore the cars and trucks, but you
get there much faster. Experienced.

Bexely North to Marrickville via Earlwood

A steep short cut
over the ridges through back streets. Faster if you don't mind a good
hill or two. Experienced.

Marrickville to Camperdown

North along Illawarra Rd and then fidget
east through the north Newtown ridge. Not too bad but plenty of squeeze
points. Experienced.

Tempe to Mascot

Alexandra Canal cycleway. Unfinished - dumps you
in the middle of nowhere. Experienced.

Mascot to Erskineville

Battling the semi-trailers up Bourke Rd.
Highly experienced.

The fastest route so far is if I go from Revesby along the M5 to Bexley,
then over the ridge through Earlwood and north along Illawarra Rd
through Marrickville, then east through Newtown and Camperdown. This
route takes about 60 minutes.

There are also some new cyclepaths in the planning stages:

Bexley North to Turrella

Via Wolli Creek, along the train line.
It'll be nice to cycle, but it also wipes out a precious bushland
riverbank. Still making my mind up on whether this is really a good
idea.

Mascot to Mascot

The missing link. One hundred metres of cycleway
from Airport Drive to Coward St, which will avoid 1 km of nastiness.
Promised Real Soon Now.

Mascot to Alexandria

Brand new cycleway along the Alexandra Canal
from Coward St to Maddox St, and maybe evn beyond. A couple of years
away atleast, but when it's done it'll finally plug the bicycle black
hole between Tempe / Arncliffe and Newtown / Alexandria.

I used to live in Erskineville and I rode to Sydney Uni every day.
So I know the cycling conditions around there fairly well. At ten
minutes each way, cycling used to be the fastest way for me to get
to work. I don't think that'll ever be quite true from Revesby, but
there are other benefits! Seven years of commuting to work within
the inner city taught me a lot of cool things about cycling.

I started my first trip just after 10am on a normal Monday. Because
it was after peak hour, some streets are fairly relaxed, and there
aren't many parked cars to deal with - they've all gone to work.
Things might get a bit more interesting when I leave a bit earlier
in the morning. Bumper to bumper is OK for cycling through, but a
steady stream of anxious drivers at 50 km/h is not so nice.

Starting from somewhere around Revesby station, this feels pretty
low key compared to cycling the back streets of inner Sydney. There's
lots of fairly direct options, I take Marco Av then Spinx Av, across
the roundabout to Watson Rd. I use the lights on Watson Rd to cross
over Fairford Rd, I head down the end of Stuart St to hook up with
a north-south shared cycleway along Salt Pan Creek.

There are atleast two cute duckboard bridges across the creek. One
is just north of the motorway, so I turn left and head north. You
get to ride under the concrete and speeding cars. There's another
crossing further south alongside the railway crossing, with Meager
Av as one way to get onto the path there. There seems to be access
to the north-south path from most streets on the west side of the
creek.

When you take the northern crossing, turning right at a junction after
passing north under the freeway, you go over two bridges. Right a
the end of the first (western) bridge is a nasty blind spot, where
the path curves right with a large bush blocking the view. You're
meant to walk your bike on the duckboards anyway, maybe on the bridges
too -- it's not clear to me. Generally I'm go pretty slow through
here anyway. You end up near McLaughlin Oval. There's another funny
spot at the easten end of the second bridge where a railing forces
a sharp left turn.

There's lots of nice paved paths heading around this area, but not
much in the way of signs. Same goes for the Salt Pan Creek paths -
there's nothing to indicate that you can use these paths to connect
through to the east. There's not much in the street directories either.
You just have to have heard about it or go exploring.

Anyway, after running into a few dead ends on the northern side of
the motorway, I take a path back under the motorway, which heads south
straight after the second bridge in the creek crossing. From there
I picked up a lovely off-road path which winds through parks and gum
trees all the way to King Georges Rd. The destination signage is minimal,
but you basically just head east with the motorway on your left hand
side. There's a few road crossings, some of which are better than
others. This is a good path if you know where you're going or you
aren't easily put off.

It's a bit desolate at first, between Salt Pan Creek and Belmore Rd.
I'm not too keen to cycle through that bit at night, Riverwood's a
nice place but it can get a bit rough. In the daytime I've had no
trouble, and I often pass people gardening or tending to the native
plants.

The Belmore Rd crossing is nasty. There's big bike logos on Belmore
Rd itself, but there's also plenty of small trucks I would rather
steer clear of. I head up the footpath and wait for a break in the
4 lane traffic. There's nowehere safe to wait in the middle, and the
dodgy ramp onto the path on the other side delivers a sharp jolt,
focring you to slow down just when you're trying to finish crossing
a busy road. Plenty of room for improvement here.

You then pass two ovals on your right, with the sound barrier of the
M5 on your left, behind which the motorway can be heard but not seen.
Bonds Rd is a much better road crossing, with a concrete thing in
the middle called a chicane, that lets you cross one half of the road,
then pause in the middle with concrete strips on either side, before
choosing a safe gap and heading back onto the path. If we have to
cross a road, then that's more like it! After Bonds Rd there's a funnly
little steep hump in the path, then a moderate uphill cycle through
a park with gum trees here and there.

There's another dodgy road crossing at Penshurst Rd. The road is fairly
quiet, one lane each way. But there's no ramp on the western side
where you'd think there should be one, and nowhere to wait in the
middle of the road. Having negotiated that, you head steeply uphill
for about 500 m and pop out on Rosetta St. You then take Rosetta downhill
and zig zag through a sound barrier to King Georges Rd, which you
need to use the pedestrian lights to cross. Which takes a while of
course. Again, not really any signs for bikes.

On the other side of King Georges, there are maps for the ``M5
Linear Park'' showing routes to the east on both the north and south
sides of the motorway.

Once you pick up this path, it's pretty sweet. There are lots of signs
atleast reminding you that you're on a cycle path, and it's pretty
hard to lose the trail. The road crossings are good, although you
have to use another set of lights to cross at Kingsgrove Rd. It's
quieter because the M5 East sound barriers are better I guess. And
a lot of it is downhill. Nice!

There is one bit on the south side where a lovely downhill run is
interrupted to send you along a back street for a hundred metres or
so that could be a little better signed. There's some cute mini give
way signs to cross a Sydney Water access road to a canal. Why the
cyclists rather than the trucks need to give way at this point though
I'm not sure.

Also a few bits could do with some optimising. An example: there's
one bit near Beverly Grove Park where you make a right hand turn near
a motorway underpass. In winter, it's in dark shadow, and there's
gravel right where you're trying to turn. I can see many a cyclist
sliding off here

All those grumbles are on the south side. The north side is a lot
smoother.

Anyway, you end up pretty quickly at Bexley Rd and there the cycleway
stops and it's back to bodgy backstreet bike bashing.

This bit is mostly OK. Not that fast, but with my experience cycling
the inner city, this feels relatively relaxed. Less traffic, almost
no parked cars on a weekday (mind you I don't pass through here until
after 9am), and no trucks.

When the M5 East Cycleway ends, there's a pedestrian overpass with
nice ramps so you can cycle slowly over Bexely Rd. But then to get
south of the railway line, you have to get over the bridge. The choice:
busy Bexley Rd, with 2 narrow lanes each way, or take a dodgy narrow
footpath. As always, when I'm on a footpath, I go pretty slow and
give walkers absolute right of way. Legally Ishould be walking myself.

The first left after the bridge is Slade Rd. It's OK on a weekdy after
peak hour, going east. There's a nasty sharp and narrow crest with
no shoulder on the south side and no footpath, so going west is not
very attractive at all for cycling. Even on the north side, there's
offten parked cars just where you need an escape hatch. Because of
the crest, you need to assume the cars will not see you, even more
so than usual. I turn on all my defensive cycling skills as I pass
through this squeeze point.

But after that it's fairly cruisy. The intersection with Hartill-Law
Av at the Bardwell Park shops is fairly realxed, if you're relaxed
about being assertive on a bike. Slade turns into Darley Rd, which
heads down a steep hill, passing through a park as you cross Bardwell
Creek.

A bit of fidgetting just before Turrella station helps to avoid the
narrow main car route. Left into John, right into Hannam, left into
Wilkins, right into Rickard, then left back onto Hannam. This little
bit of Hannam has no parked cars, but not really any rooms for moving
bicycles either. It's quiet, but I still stay a bit wary.

As you pass Turrella Station, suddenly the bike route signage kicks
in. There's none between Bexley and Turrella, but from here to Arncliffe
it's meticulous, pretty much the bets I've seen in Sydney. Every intersection
is clearly marked with directions on which way to cycle. Just like
the cars get everywhere else in Sydney when there's any doubt on which
way to go! There's also random bike logos painted on the road, although
you have to look for them under the wheels of parked cars and trucks.
I'm still not sure how useful these are other than to help councils
pretend they've built a cycle path.

Speaking of trucks, there's plenty around as Arncliffe rapidly mutates
from industrial to high rise residential. Even after the building
is done, I'm forecasting an increase in parked 4WD's and anxious BMW's
as folks who move into these sorts of flats are going to want more
than the one car space they're allotted. So conditions are expected
to deteriorate.

So, anyway, the route from Turrella Station: Turrella St, Thompson
St, Bonar St, Guess Av, Arncliffe St. Arncliffe St brings you onto
the western side of the Princes Hwy, just south of the Cooks River
Bridge. Here we have another entertaining cycleway episode. Those
lovely bike signs I was telling you about, they point straight across
6 lanes of traffic, with no median strip, not even a ramp onto the
curb on the other side. With help from an RTA engineer I found out
they're going to build a set of traffic lights here. Phew. Meanwhile,
despite the green river bank on the other side, I try to avoid the
temptation to play frogger with my bicycle.

From here it's north over the footpath on the western side of the
Cooks River Bridge (which seems to be encouraged by the bike logo
signs, somehow presumably that's legal for this bit).

Some of the bike routes in Marrickville are a con job. They're deceptively
half decent at first, but the plan seems to be to terrify you out
of such a silly thing as cycling through this suburb. Semi-trailer
splat factor is high. Lots of car doors to dodge. Dumps you on King
St with nowhere to go. The irony is that people living in Marrickville
Council have the lowest car ownership in the state.

Illawarra Rd seems to be the best north-south option.

South Sydney Council seems to say, ``cycle if you must, but do
it aesthetically, and keep out from under the wheels of my luxury
4WD!'' But things are generally better in South Sydney than Marrickville
(or maybe it's just that I know the territory better), and it's the
part of Sydney where you're most likely to see other cyclists on the
road.

Thanks to Neil at Bicycle NSW and Brad at the RTA for talking me through
some possible routes before I did it the first time. Thanks to Paul
and Fiona from Marrickville and South Sydney Bicycle User Group (MASSBUG)
for pointing out Illawarra Rd as the best option through Marrickville.
Thanks to Paul from Bike South West BUG for the guided tour through
Earlwood and along the M5 shoulder.